Strangers on a Train
by arethesemyfeet
Summary: They were two strangers on a train. She knew nothing of the history they shared, that this war veteran who smiled at her was the same man who used to bring her Thai food in the middle of the night and buy her plastic figurines to make her feel better.


In his previous life he had hated the train. Hated the noise, the lack of leg room, the children running up and down the corridors tailed by irate parents. If he was honest it was the parents that had bothered him more than the children. And those were just American trains. And they were a damn sight better than the trips he had had to endure in the battered shacks on wheels that passed for trains in Iraq. Crowded with chickens, injured soldiers, weeping women and children trying in vain to flee. But that was another lifetime. He had been a different person. Now the train was his main mode of transport. The leg room wasn't such a problem for him any more and the scar slicing through his face, still red and angry after so many years, acted as a deterrent for both friendly strangers and bored children.

She had hated the train. She liked to be on control of where she went and what speed she went at, neither of which were within her grasp on a train to Washington. Yet here she was, battered book in hand, reading glasses perched on her nose, slipping further off every time she moved her head. He had recognised her straight away, greying auburn hair pulled back in a loose pony tail, suit jacket hanging open over a wine shirt. The clunky beaded necklace half hidden under the shirt made him smile and realise that some things would never change. The simple gold band on her wedding finger told him that some things did. He had followed her progress over the years, bought all her books the second they came out, read them cover to cover the first day, pored over every word the next, cried endless tears when Andy Lister had met his untimely demise at the hands of a particularly heinous serial killer. The face on the book jacket had aged, the features remained the same, yet, judging from the figure in the seat across the aisle, the picture had never done her much justice anyway. She had been the only part of his old life that he had kept with him. Not her, or their work, but her books and, through Kathy and Andy, their partnership.

He was tempted to go and say hello, but even that whisper wasn't strong. He had severed all ties with her, with that part of his life. Put them all in a box, her, the squints, their work, his socks. All buried so deep inside himself now that he would never find them again. It had been for their own good. This is what he told himself when he stood outside the Jeffersonian, fresh from a war he would never recover from, one eye missing, half his face covered in scar tissue, and one leg absent below an ugly stump that ended above where his knee should have been. The land mines had been unexpected. The damage they had done not so much so, but difficult to come to terms with none the less. He was a decorated war hero. Badges and medals on his uniform. Colours on his shoulders. The tint of blood and death in his remaining eye, and the screams of dieing comrades in his ears. His kill list was off the charts. He doubted there were enough criminals in Washington to ever help him balance this one out. He had leant on his stick and stared at the building where so much of his life had taken place. The work he had done there, the friends he'd made, the jokes told, the dinners shared. Another life, another man. He had walked away and never returned. Left a message on her voicemail when he knew she wouldn't be home, told her he wasn't coming back, he was staying in Iraq. Could do more work there. He knew she would have tried to find out where he was and what had happened. His only stroke of luck was that the land mine had attacked during a classified mission, the details of which would never reach her ears. Cullen had orders to never tell her where he was or speak about him to the squints. The deputy director's dislike for lap type people had made this a well received request and as far as he knew not one of the squints knew he lived in their own back yard, in the city they worked, lived and breathed in.

For a year after his return he had dreaded each knock on the door, each chime of the telephone, for fear it would be her. But after a while he realised she was not trying to find him. She was respecting his wishes. Her calls to Rebecca stopped coming and Rebecca finally stopped shooting him dirty looks and muttering under her breath about them every time time she dropped Parker round. It had been all too easy to cut her from his life. From his memories not so much. Her face was always on the news, documentaries, magazines and anthropology journals. He tried to follow her career without having to see her face, a feat that did not prove easy. He had more than once wandered into a bookshop only to find her signing books. He had paid a kid to get one signed for him once. Had asked simply for him to ask for her to sign it to Jasper and had watched as her face had stiffened when the kid mentioned the name. That had been the book in which Andy had died. The irony had reduced him to tears when he learned of the birth of her first child, Jasper, four months after he was born when he picked up an old magazine in a doctors office. She had finally relented to marriage and children it seemed. Last he heard she wasn't living in a neighbourhood that warranted white picket fences though. He took little satisfaction from this. Her husband was a photographer. The one who had taken her book photos incidentally. He was a handsome man, thick dark hair that he had the decency to let to fade to a distinguished grey. He drove an Austin Martin he had restored himself and took photos which were undeniably good. Their brown haired children, two boys, one girl, had gone to the same elementary school as Parker had but were all grown up and established in the world. One an entomologist, another a doctor in Medicines san Frontier and the youngest son in charge of his very own diner. He had eaten there once. The pie was good and he had complemented the chef who had shrugged and said his mom liked it. Sometimes it was nice to know she had not forgotten him either, even if she had somehow managed to move on with her life.

The decision not to go back after Iraq had not been a difficult one to make. He wasn't the same person he had been when she had pleaded with him not to leave. Before she had sworn she would never speak to him if he left. To her credit she had managed to go for a whole month without writing to him. That particular letter had simply told him he was a bastard but the content of the subsequent letters had improved dramatically. She had never know he had been injured. Had never heard word of the three friends, one of them only 24, who had been lost when their convoy drove through the lethal field. He hadn't wanted to tell her. Guilt had torn him up for months until he had finally realised that it wasn't his fault, that surviving hadn't been something he had had a choice in. He sent gifts to his fallen comrades' children every Christmas. He told himself he never went back because he didn't want her pity. He had known she wouldn't have recoiled in terror and disgust at the sight of him, but the fear had plagued him non the less so that when he returned silently to Washington, no press, no military, no ceremony had greeted him at the arrivals gate. He had hobbled through, ignoring the pitying looks, the hugging relatives, the tearful reunited lovers. A shell of the man he once was.

H hadn't set eyes on her in several years. She had stopped writing, Kathy having never got over the death of her partner, retired to Philidelphia to settle on the street named after the one he himself had grown up on. The final book had been dedicated to her husband and he admittedly had felt a pang of regret upon seeing the words "I love you" written to someone who was not him. He knew she herself had retired but was want to do the odd lecture, or consult on an unusual case. Which was probably why she found her self on a train back to Washington. The fact that she had been visiting his home town surely meant nothing.

He watched her, this stranger who had once meant the world to him, had occupied his every thought and still did most of the time. He wasn't afraid she would notice the scrutiny. If she looked up he would simply nod and offer a smile. She wouldn't recognise him now. Thirty years was a long time and she would only see his injured profile any way. Perhaps she would offer a sympathetic smile, or look away in distaste. But she seemed not to notice the intensity of his stare. Absorbed in her book as she was. He wondered what author held her so captivated and judged from the battered cover that it was not an anthropologist or fellow scientist. He wondered what became of the colleagues he used to call friends. They had disappeared off the radar some years back. Or he had stopped caring to look for them. He knew of Angela's uproot to Paris nearly two decades back but he knew not her reasons or whereabouts. Jack had remained equally elusive. He had read about various grad students and protégées she had worked with over the years in articles published but never had he heard news of Wendell or Mr Nigel-Murray. The car accident that had resulted in the death of Lance Sweets and his three year old daughter had shaken him bad and he had lain flowers on their coffins when all but Daisy and her young son had remained by the graveside after the ceremony. She had embraced him and whispered a teary thank you and, as far as he knew, never spoke of his presence at the funeral to anybody. There had been a book dedicated to Lance too. She had written a short paragraph to him that would only have made sense to three people, one of whom was dead, the other vanished without a trace. Her life had been relatively happy since he had left as far as he could tell. She had won awards, and titles. She was a professor now and almost a grandmother. Three months longer he estimated. He hoped the child would inherit it's grandmother's eyes. He glanced from the wedding ring on her finger up to her face and was shocked to find those eyes staring at him with a scrutiny that made him want to squirm. He nodded at her in the way people seem to greet other strangers and she smiled at him, a small half smile that tore his heart, before she returned to the book. He had known she wouldn't recognise him but the reality of it stung him all the same. They were two strangers on a train. She knew nothing of the history they shared, that this war veteran who smiled at her was the same man who used to bring her Thai food in the middle of the night and buy her plastic figurines to make her feel better. She did not know that this was the man who had sent her a poker chip in the mail on the day of her wedding or anonymous daisies to her hospital room on the birth of each of her children. She did not know that this man had saved her husbands life one night when his austin martin had skidded on an icy road. The cripple with the scarred face was nothing more to her than a guardian angel she knew nothing about. This knowledge caused a tear to spill from his one good eye. But the stranger never looked up again.


End file.
